If you’ve been trapped in your workplace unable to leave, eating Doritos from the vending machine for dinner and sleeping under your desk, should you be paid for that time?

Here's a rule of thumb: The best states to work in are some of the worst states to work with.

Before you start planning how you’ll spend that “free” paycheck before your finance department re-balances the budget for 2026 you need to know that your payroll provider is probably smart enough to anticipate this. There are two methods that payroll providers use to solve the 27-paycheck problem: Pro rata and pay as usual.

These days, it seems obvious that workers should be able to demand an accurate accounting for their time. But it wasn’t always that way. 

When someone is paid for a day they didn't work, it MUST be entered into payroll as some kind of Paid Time Off type. Otherwise, there's no way to pay it. Most of the uncommon leave types don't allow negative balances in payroll systems. So if your time off isn't allocated to another bucket, it can't get paid. The discrepancy could even block payroll and prevent everyone from getting paid.

Here are five examples of mundane breakdowns that I’ve seen lead to payroll errors:

Except that something didn’t add up. They didn’t even have employees for half that time, and one of the people they were assessing violations on wasn’t even in the state. 

When you’re the one who makes sure that everything is done by the book, there’s no one left to manage your exit correctly. That often means that you’re more likely than anyone to be underpaid or have your exit mishandled. 

Letters from government agencies can be real scary sometimes. Especially when they contain words like "Warrant" and penalties with commas in them. By all means, take these letters seriously. But don't let them scare you.

But what passes for “security” in these agencies is a cruel joke. It is no more realistic for you to expect me to tap Mr. or Ms. Business Owner on the shoulder and hand them the phone than it is for me to demand that you tap the governor on the shoulder and get him/her on the phone. 

Nearly everything that happens in the company goes through payroll. And the person managing it needs to have the skills of an accountant, IT, lawyer, insurance agent, and operations manager, all rolled into one.

You run a draft payroll the regular way to get the numbers, enter the gross pay into an off-cycle payroll, and it spits out a number that’s off by 17¢ from what regular payroll said.  Why? Whyyyyy?

It drives me crazy when people treat a company’s FEIN (Federal Employer Identification Number) like it’s a big secret. FEINs are public information. 

If a California-based employee leaves, check that your provider calculates the accrual on a calendar day basis. If the employee has used some of their balance, this can get tricky.